


Plotbunnies

by Rafun



Series: My Muse [2]
Category: My Muse
Genre: Crack, Gen, Plotbunnies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:01:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rafun/pseuds/Rafun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever got overrun by a Plotbunny and wondered where on earth that came from? Well, here is the answer. Or an answer, anyway. Or just another bunny. Who knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plotbunnies

The Muse was lying in bed, sleeping, or at least trying to. It didn’t help that she was living right above a factory of ideas. Things used to be better. She used to live in a palace. There used to be fewer humans having a rampage about reality, and thus fewer minds who tried to meddle with the poor old thing. Everything was easier in the old day,  and the older the days the better.

There once had been that  time when men didn’t have time to think about everything so much – admittedly, it had also been the time when mammoth-skin was last in fashion – but at least there hadn’t been so much work back then. And she’d been better appreciated. Oh, there had been times, times when there had been nine muses, as men had decided there had to be nine kinds of art – goddesses they had been back then, goddesses! They had even had their own mountain, and animals had been immolated to them…

And today?

Today she was alone again, if one didn’t count the growing numbers of rabbits who had made a home on the lower floors of thee factory. Big, aggressive rabbits, which at times presented a strange sense of humor and bred like – like rabbits. She didn’t even want to know who had come up with that idea again, lest it might have been her – creative rabbits, seriously. If the beasts had at least been small, cute and cuddly, like the bunnies human children liked to keep. Bu no, she of course had big, biting bunnies who attacked any finished, or even half-finished idea like a bunch of shoppers a table with sales. The Muse could hear them downstairs fighting, which just added to the noise of the factory and was another reason why she was sleeping so badly recently.

Once, ideas had simply been wrapped in thoughts or visions, to gently float down to earth, but these days the gnomes working in the factory dared no longer to wrap the ideas. The safer way was to throw them to the rabbits and run the other direction as long as the beasts were busy. The ideas still seemed to reach the humans, so the Muse didn’t worry too much about it, though she suspected that being an artist or author these day might be a somewhat – uncomfortable calling.

Judging from the sounds downstairs it was about time again. The squealing, and hissing and wailing predominated even the screeching of the machines in the factory-hall. In despair, the Muse buried her head underneath her pillow, waiting for the noise to subside. After some time she did fall asleep again. Obviously, she didn’t dream, as a creature creating dreams can’t have any of its own, so that the gnome who hammered at her door not much later could only raise her from sleep, not from her dreams. Still she jumped rather irritated.

Which wasn’t too surprising, considered that she was sole responsible for all earthen creativity and more than just a little overworked.

“Out,” she ordered, even before the door had opened all the way, and for a second it really looked as if the small imp in her heavy protective leather-clothing would retreat. But when she threw a glance over her shoulder she looked into the sneering faces of her co-workers who were longer at the job and knew better how to cheat when straws were drawn. So she straightened her shoulders and tripped forward.

“This – this we were able to save, afterwards,” she muttered, carefully laying down a shred of _something_ on the floor.

The Muse groaned distressed, gathering the folds of her nightgown, and picking up the dirty piece of fabric with two fingers while trying not to touch it at all. “This you have – saved?” she asked incredulous.

If these days ‘saved’ meant the same as ‘savaged’, she didn’t even want to know what ‘utter devastation’ looked like. Oh yes, in the old days everything did use to be better…

“What is this?” she asked, when there was no reaction from the imp. “Or more likely – what was this?”

“Um… that’s the sample for the untearable silk we were to develop.”

“Indeed.”

The Muse stared at the shred which dazzled with the light – at least those parts of it that weren’t covered in a sticky dark-green  liquid.

“Well, you see, we were almost finished and wanted to take the sample out of the laboratory for drying, because the dye was just reeking, you see, and then we were surprised by a drove of words, so we ran, but there were those rabbits just coming in from the other direction, and when they saw all those words they just went crazy, and we were – we were right in the middle of it all when they caught scent of the new idea, and then, you see… um… we dropped the bale and climbed the walls.”

“I see,” the Muse said. ”Leave me alone,” she added, still examining the shred in her hand. It was strangely intriguing, and she was too tired to yell at the imps. Besides, there just had to be something that could be done with this… With a piece of untearable silk, that unfortunately had completely gone to pieces. The whole thing was just too off-wall to be useless.

She dropped into the armchair behind her desk.

Unfortunately, she had no clue just exactly what could be done with this something. What she needed was an idea, and fast, before the rabbits could eat it and shit it out in form of a story, or whatever it was they did. Lost in thoughts she used the shred in her hands to wipe the surface of the desktop, which had seen better days as well. Clichés where growing there and she hadn’t yet found a scouring agent that would root out these disgusting, mildew-like parasites. Sometimes the weed grew so high that she had no other choice but to harvest all those princesses waiting for a knight in shining armor, all those cat-girls and all those princes with the magical whatever, looking for a white horse, and send them to earth were they would ruin some poor fellows original ideas.

But it was their own fault. If just humans hadn’t started to recycle ideas, then there wouldn’t have been time for them to mutate into clichés. What kind of people were those humans anyway, flying to the moon and splitting atoms, but unable to invent a cleaning agent able to fight clichés?

There was a soft ‘blub’ like the sound extinguished species make when the realize that they no longer exist, and the Muse stared into the face of a horrible monster with evil, blood-shot eyes and an unhealthy pinkish-brown skin tone. Horrified she threw herself backwards, convinced that on top of everything else there now was a human living inside her desk, but then she realized that she was just staring into her own reflection. Surprised she gazed at her shining clean desk and then at the shred in her hand. Just then a small, fidgeting cliché was dissolving, right within one of the large green spots the rabbit-blood had left on the silk. It wasn’t even recognizable anymore whether it had been one of those shy girls who always beat the cheerleader, or a new reality-show for TV.

The Muse laughed brightly and wiped the desk again, until the top was gleaming without a streak. Happily she leaned back, and suddenly the jangling and barking, the hissing and squeaking downstairs sounded like the sweet ring of a thunderstorm, a wonderful, long-needed thunderstorm, cleansing the factory of ideas.  

With her wondrous cloth in hands she approached the window and smiled when with one wipe the growth on the pane blubbed , boiled, and vanished. At long last, she had a clear view at the beautiful fish flying across the sky again. Only the sun was bothering her – bright green today, what a dreadful color – had that been her idea as well?

Happily the Muse clapped her hands and watched as the sun turned a becoming blue. Then she fastened a string to the collar of the toad in the running-wheel, ran the string around the door-handle, and kept the other end in her hand while grabbing a box with a whistling fly. Then she climbed onto her desk, took the toad out of the wheel and placed her at the edge of desktop. The stupid thing remained there, inflating its jowls, until the muse released the whistling fly. Hungrily the toad then jumped forward and off the table-top; the Muse held on to the string, and the weight of the toad pulled down the door-handle. At once, there was the clicking of not-so-terrible-anymore claws, and then the bunnies invaded the heart of the factory of ideas.

The Muse remained on top of her desk just in case and stared satisfied at her new-found cleaning cloth, while all around her the bunnies where grazing on the clichés, every now and then leaving a small heap of stories, well digested and mumbling softly.


End file.
